


To Hell with the Consequences

by Adel Mortescryche (Mortescryche)



Series: FFXV Time Travel and Dimension Travel [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Absent Characters, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Don't copy to another site, Episode Ardyn Prologue, Friendship, GUESS WHO SAW THE PROLOGUE AND PROCEEDED TO NOPE HER WAY RIGHT TO WORD, Gen, I tried very hard to avoid bashing anyway, Multi, No Bashing, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Spite Fic, Team as Family, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 05:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17822699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortescryche/pseuds/Adel%20Mortescryche
Summary: Ardyn was sure he was walking to his death. And then, he was sure that Aera would die in his arms, and he wouldn't be able to do anything to stop it.History proceeds to take a very different path, all because of the interference of one strange man, who crashes into the throne room before Somnus' blow can land.





	To Hell with the Consequences

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VolxdoSioda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VolxdoSioda/gifts).



> As the tags said: GUESS WHO WATCHED THE PROLOGUE.
> 
> Canon can go screw itself. _Yup._
> 
> For anyone else who screamed at their screens when Aera went down, and Ardyn went _Down_. Enjoy.

Aera threw herself in the way of his little brother's blade, and Ardyn's heart ripped itself to shreds in his chest.

He'd been doing so  _ well _ at ignoring the disease rippling through his flesh, but in that flash of a second where the very last of his hopes dwindled to nothing, it seemed like such a waste. It all seemed like such a  _ waste,  _ when the last person who actually understood him to any extent was cut down like so much human filth in the way of greater things.

And then, between one split second and the next, there was a flash of light. And the downward slash of Somnus’ sword was stopped by another blade - this one longer, crystalline in the moments before it solidified into five feet of pure, Solenheimer steel.

Adyn gathered Aera into his arms and spun her away, shielding her from the possibility of any further harm. And ignoring the way she protested loudly.

The man standing between him and Somnus looked familiar, in the way of forgotten dreams. His hair was the same blue-black of their father's, that Ardyn hadn't been blessed enough to inherit the way Somnus had. The same irritatingly pale skin that was the gift to everyone in the line of Lucis - another characteristic that Ardyn hadn't inherited. Always more their mother's son than their father's.

Somnus looked like he'd seen a ghost. At least until his lips parted in a snarl, shoving forward with all his weight to make the other man's block fail.

It was for naught.

The congregation and guards, waiting with bated breath, gasped in shock when the stranger shifted, twisted out of the way,  _ warped behind Somnus _ , and proceeded to plant a foot in his back. Kicking hard enough to send him flying right past Ardyn and Aera, crashing face first onto the steps leading up to the Crystal.

When Ardyn saw the man's face, he realized why Somnus had looked so shocked. It was like looking into the faces of their Clan Leaders of old. Not any single one, but all of them at once. Whoever the stranger was, he bore all the strongest hallmarks of the line of Lucis on his face with zero qualm. With a sparse, thin haired beard and long, messy hair, he looked like an old Lucian hermit that had stepped out of time to bring justice down on their heads.

It just figured that the man didn't bother to spare a glance for Ardyn, his jewel bright gaze focused directly on the Crystal instead.

“Bahamut,” The man bit out, voice hoarse. “I know you're watching. Come and face me head on, you  _ absolute fucking coward.” _

There were scandalized gasps from the audience, and Aera gave an offended mumble. Ardyn kept his silence, waiting to see what would happen next.

There was no change. Somnus pushed himself to his knees, looking caught between fury and glee, but the man paid him no attention.

“Bahamut!” He snarled. “You can’t hide from me! I was there when it happened!  _ She brought all all of us back at the same damn time.” _

“Fool!” Somnus yelled, “Think you that you're better than the rest of us? Better than  _ I,  _ the Chosen King of Lucis?”

Ardyn was tempted to tell his idiot of a brother to hold his tongue, and not tempt the ire of whatever this man, this _being_ who spoke as an equal with _The_ _Draconian_ , was. But Aera's fingers, twisted into the loose material of his robes, made him wait. And watch.

The silence paid off, because he was in the perfect position to see the stranger's gaze shift from the Crystal to Somnus, the light in his eyes utterly condescending.

“You? The Chosen King?” He repeated, sounding amused. “ _ You?” _

Somnus rose to his feet, spots of pink high on his cheeks, his expression a rictus of offended anger. 

The strange man ignored him, walking right past Ardyn and Aera, and avoiding the slash of the blade that Somnus aimed at his side, instead flashing right through the sword and appearing on the other side of it, making his way up the stairs. He stopped right before the Crystal, head tilting to the side as he regarded it.

“...Huh. I can’t believe it. Are you actually  _ trapped  _ in there? You’re the ones who gifted this stupid rock to the Lucis Caelums in the first place; why the hell is it stopping you from incorporating yourself out here?”

And then, much to everyone’s horror, he actually  _ reached out for the Crystal.  _

Aera shoved Ardyn out of the way, crying out a warning, but it proved to be unnecessary.

The crystal lit up at the touch of the stranger’s palm, glowing a gentle blue beneath his hand. Suffused in the light emanating from it, he looked like someone  _ truly  _ chosen by the Six, or like some forgotten, Elder God, erased from the annals of time. Of the same brood as Etro and Her Brothers.

A sneer spread out across the man’s lips, clearly visible from the angle Ardyn was standing.

“Oh,  _ now  _ you choose to speak up, do you. Come out here, asshole, so I can give you a piece of my mind.”

Aera gave a pained noise, pressing one hand to her breast, and reaching back the other towards Ardyn, who willingly gave her something to hold on to. He felt a little faint himself. He’d never professed to have any great love for the Astrals, but he  _ did  _ respect them, as any man with even a modicum of common sense might. Watching someone so casually curse out the Six was… unnerving.

And then, before everyone’s shocked gazes, the light within the crystal flashed once, twice, thrice before a shockwave was released from it, pushing everyone back on their feet. Aera came stumbling back into him, and Ardyn wrapped an arm around her waist, stabilizing them both with his greater weight and footing.

Somnus let out a small, disbelieving moan, falling to his knees in supplication, along with everyone else in the throne room, guards and the people of the city alike. 

Gilgamesh himself fell to one knee, unsheathing his blade and resting it before him in honor of the Blademaster, taking shape before the Crystal. First the silhouette, and then, slowly, as though being woven out of mist and light, his form, and then the color. In the blink of an eye, the being standing above them had a  _ weight  _ to His presence, His height putting him at least a foot above every other man in the room.

And then, without hesitation, He went down on one knee as well, His Blade crystallizing in his hands as he set it before himself, its hilt held in both His hands.

**This One Greets the Chosen King**

**Sent From Beyond to the Beginning**

**Etro’s Blessings Upon the Savior**

**Protector of This Star.**

Ardyn  _ choked,  _ hands automatically supporting Aera when she swayed to the side, looking faint. 

The words seemed to shock Somnus out of his initial attempt at piety, at any rate, because he shoved himself to his feet again, jaw sagging.

“ _ What?!”  _ he yelled. “This man? This plebian? This  _ nobody?!!” _

The stranger  _ snorted,  _ looking unimpressed.

“Honestly? I don’t care what you think. What  _ either  _ of you think. I’m no savior. I’m just here because I don’t like hypocrisy, or tragedy. And I’m all about a fair fight. And the bloody Astrals  _ tricked  _ me.”

Silence. Utter silence.

Bahamut gave a sighing sound that echoed both through the chamber and inside their heads.

**My Lord Noctis,** he  _ grumbled,  _ and the man, Noctis, shot him a dirty look.

“We’ve already had this discussion, Draconian. You know my stance on what you did.” he replied, tone snide.

And then, with the tinkling sound of glass, or  _ ice,  _ shattering, there was  _ another  _ Astral standing amongst them, on Noctis’ other side.

Hauntingly beautiful, Shiva gave a sad smile, glancing first Ardyn and Aera’s, and then Somnus’ way, before turning to Noctis as well.

“Your Majesty,” she murmured, mild, “Holding Bahamut’s tresspasses against him will not change anything.”

Noctis sighed, sounding decades older than he looked, shooting a wry look at Shiva.

“Trust you to come in and try to calm everyone down.”

Shiva’s smile brightened, turning even sweeter. And she reached out for Bahamut, gently drawing Him to His feet.

**We are Here,** Bahamut said.  **What Now, O Chosen King.**

“Well, to start with you could stop trying to give everyone a headache,” Noctis grumped, and Bahamut  _ twitched,  _ while Shiva laughed softly, following after Noctis when he began to make his way down the stairs.

When Somnus tried to say something, to reach out for Noctis, Shiva raised a gentle hand, and blasted him away from the stairs with a blast of ice laden wind, sister to a blizzard except condensed to a concentrated stream. Gilgamesh shifted uncomfortably in place, clearly looking to defend the man he’d chosen to protect, but a quelling glance from Bahamut stayed him.

Ardyn shuffled Aera behind him again, ignoring her protests, straightening and ignoring the pain from his diseased flesh, staring back head on when Noctis stopped before him. 

For all that the strange man seemed larger than life, he barely came to Ardyn’s collarbone when standing before him. The same height as Aera, ironically enough. The knee in it’s brace might have had something to do with the slightly slumped position in which the other man stood, but even accounting for it, he… wasn’t particularly what someone might imagine when thinking of a man, a being, that might control the Might of the Six.

Noctis looked up at him, expression… Just the slightest bit off. As though he was staring into the face of someone he knew, but filled with regret. When he reached up, Ardyn caught him by the wrist, eyes narrowing.

If nothing else, the action served to wipe the regret off of Noctis’ face. Instead, his lips split apart in an amused smirk.

“And here I thought you looked different enough that you couldn’t be the same man. Can’t mistake that grip though.”

“My Lord-” Aera gasped, trying to step forward, but Ardyn kept her back, not looking away from Noctis’ gaze.

“Calm yourself, Oracle,” Shiva said soothingly. “We mean him no harm.”

“How can that be?” Ardyn asked. “Every other time I’ve been in the presence of the Crystal since I began healing the people of these lands, I felt a sense of… Foreboding. As though I was unwelcome. I was summoned here, under pretense, I was attacked in the name of the Astrals, and now You claim that your Chosen King means me no harm?”

“So many  _ words,”  _ Noctis sighed. “You should have been born Tenebraen, I swear to fuck.”

Ardyn blinked.

“Excuse me?” he responded, confused. Noctis rolled his eyes.

“Right. Tenebrae doesn’t exist yet either. Just, get down here you tall lummox.”

His part said, Noctis reached up with his other hand as well, and before Ardyn could stop him, pressed it up against Ardyn’s cheek, mirroring the gentle touch he’d had with the Crystal from before.

The touch of Noctis’ skin against his own wiped Ardyn’s mind  _ clean,  _ in a way not even Aera’s healing words and spells had managed, in the past. At first chillingly cool, and then blistering with heat, Ardyn cried out, collapsing forward right into Noctis’ arms, feeling magic course through his skin and into his veins, burning,  _ burning,  _ **_burning._ **

He heard Aera cry out his name, distantly felt her hands on his robes before she was drawn away, leaving him to suffer in a world of pain, gently lowered to his knees and still leaning on the stranger that had appeared amongst them.

Ardyn didn’t know how long it had taken, for the agony to end. But when it did, he came back to himself, lying in his childhood bed, in the mansion their family had claimed for itself in his youth. The air still, and peaceful, around him; not a sound to be heard.

When he looked around himself tiredly, he found Aera, seated on one side, head pillowed on her arms atop the mattress and snoring softly, deeply asleep. And found Noctis on the other, clean shaved, reading a book.

He tried to speak, and found that he couldn’t. Noctis seemed to sense the change, however, and glanced up, before setting his book to the side, and picking up a glass of water waiting on Ardyn’s bedside table. Ardyn frowned, but he allowed himself to be helped up, sipping weakly at the water.

“What… happened?” he asked, voice painfully strained.

“Your system got flooded with magic unfamiliar to it, is what happened,” Noctis replied blandly. “Didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t explain anything if I wanted any chance at actually managing to wipe out the last of the Scourge in you.”

It was only then that Ardyn realized that the peaceful quiet… wasn’t the air around him. But inside his own head.

The whispers of the daemonic taint infecting him… were  _ gone. _

“How?” Ardyn breathed, and Noctis gave a sad smile.

“I wouldn’t have been able to do it on my own, that’s for sure. And I doubt I’ll ever be able to do it again; Luna and…  _ his…  _ magic is gone now. Whatever you decide to do after this, I’m pretty sure taking the starscourge into yourself to heal people  _ really  _ shouldn’t be the way you go about things from now on.”

Ardyn stared back at him, uncomprehendingly.

For months, the whispers in his ear from the taint had been his biggest fear, a ticking clock and a promise that there would come a day when Aera’s kindness and his own will wouldn’t be strong enough to hold back the deluge. He’d seen what happened to the people who were too far gone, and Ardyn knew... He _knew_ that, the day he finally gave in, he would be a greater monster than every single one he’d managed to prevent the creation of by helping the people as he had, over the years.

And now, in the matter of hours (days?), everything he had feared had simply fallen apart, all by the grace of a stranger that had chosen to interrupt what surely would have been Ardyn’s, and  _ Aera’s,  _ end.

“Who  _ are  _ you?” he couldn’t help but ask.

Noctis laughed at that, sounding pained.

“Just someone who could help. The only one who had enough magic to do it, honestly, and even then it almost  _ wasn’t  _ enough. I nearly got here too late. Even a second later…” he gave a tired sigh, slumping over.

“But I didn’t,” Noctis admitted, voice quiet. “And I did what I set out to do. I fulfilled my promises. My work is done.”

_ And I don’t know what to do next,  _ his tone said. Ardyn had heard the sentiment before, particularly in the voices of soldiers tired of war. People who had walked forward on sheer stubbornness, if only because they were too terrified to stop and face whatever would happen once they did.

Hearing the same sentiment in the voice of his strange savior  _ hurt. _

“Not yet,” a fresh voice cut in.

Both Ardyn and Noctis turned to face Aera, who was watching them patiently, face still pillowed on her arms.

“Aera?” Ardyn asked confused, but she simply reached out to pat his knee comfortingly, gaze focused straight on Noctis’ tired face.

“Shiva spoke to me, as did Carbuncle. Your work is not done, Chosen King.”

“Uh, no, I’m pretty damn sure it is. I  _ saved  _ him. That was the entire point of this.” Noctis countered, snide.

It made Ardyn blink with no little confusion. The Chosen King’s mission… was to save  _ him? _

Aera coughed, clearly able to read the direction of his thoughts, and trying not to laugh. Ardyn shot her an irate look, but obviously, she wasn’t kind enough to look back at him, instead focused on her argument.

“And yet, there are still people who suffer, all over Eos. They need your,  _ our _ , help, King of Light.”

“Yeah, right. No, I gave up that title with this little shindig. Too late, time’s up, dingdingding, we have a new Chosen King!”

Ardyn and Aera both blinked at him uncomprehendingly. The majority of what Noctis had said had gone right over their heads, all except the last bit, when he gestured pointedly in Ardyn’s direction.

“I… can’t say it’s a role I ever wanted.” Ardyn answered haltingly. “But as I told the people, if there is no one else, it is a role I will take up. But only if I  _ have  _ to.”

_ And I don’t,  _ is what he didn’t have to say out loud. Because, seated before them was a man that the Astrals themselves had willingly answered with respect. What, then, did  _ Ardyn  _ have to offer, of all men?

Noctis’ face screwed up with distaste, but Aera rolled her eyes, clapping to get both their attention.

“No one said there had to be a King in anything but name. Or that there had to be a single King. Or a  _ King  _ at all - The Glacian confessed to me that the Six would be just as happy with a Queen who could lead the masses, if she swore to protect them and lead them well.”

Ardyn’s brows rose, as did Noctis’. The implication there was obvious enough; Aera had all but spelt it out.

“All three of us?” Noctis asked, sounding stunned.

“I don’t see why not.” Aera replied, looking gleefully smug, the expression far more pleasant on her face than on Somnus’. “The Astrals bid that we set up a Kingdom where people can live in peace and harmony, and worship them. I’m quite sure a council of leaders can do better than a single monarch. It would stop any one man, or woman, from trying to claim sovereignty like Somnus did if nothing else.”

“Speaking of which,” Ardyn cut in, “What of my brother?”

Noctis and Aera glanced at each other before looking back at him, smiling innocently. Their expressions made him sigh, caught between bemusement and hilarity.

“I suppose I will never know.”

“You suppose right,” Aera commented primly. “Now. All in favor of my motion?”

Noctis and Ardyn both remained silent for a long moment, trading glances of their own. There was a story, here, Ardyn was sure. Men did not appear out of thin air, and carelessly call upon the Six, after all. And there was the regret in Noctis’ eyes, when they had first met gazes.

But it could wait. If Aera had her way, Noctis wouldn’t be going anywhere any time soon.

“Aye.” he said, firm.

Aera smiled brightly at him, reaching out with her right hand to clasp his left firmly. They both looked to Noctis, who was staring at them, looking conflicted.

“...Noctis?” Aryn asked, when another moment had passed.

The sound of his voice seemed to make up Noctis’ mind for him, because he nodded hesitatingly right after, setting his right hand in Aera’s left, and his left hand in Ardyn’s right. They formed a strange little circle, there, seated around Ardyn’s bed.

“In the name of my Calling as Oracle: We will bring Light to this Star. So mote it be.” Aera whispered, all but glowing with the strength of her conviction.

Noctis’ hand tightened in his grip around Ardyn’s, and when Ardyn looked at him he found Noctis staring at Aera, looking like he was liable to burst into tears if he stared at her for any longer. So, he squeezed down on the hand clasping his, nodding quietly when Noctis glanced towards him, visibly startled.

“So mote it be,” Ardyn murmured, not looking away.

Noctis stared back, and bit his lip, before finally nodding, expression shifting, and steeling himself. Ardyn found that he was, once again, staring into the face of that strange, Light suffused man who had warped into the throne room, Before.

“So mote it be.” Noctis said, calm. “Our Will for the People.”

Ardyn wasn’t sure how he’d gone from walking to his death to  _ this.  _ But he supposed, being alive with Aera on one side, and his savior on the other,  _ had  _ to be better than the alternative.

Whatever it might have been. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed reading this! 
> 
> [shakes fist at Squeenix] Why you do this to us damnit. [cries pathetically] Talk about my Feels for the Trash Hobo Uncle hitting Critical Mass.
> 
> **Please consider leaving comments or kudos on your way out!** It'll feed my ~~spite fic writing skillz~~ inspiration to write more, and often, in spite of my writing blocks and lack of time thanks to the Diploma I'm pursuing. (Animation and VFX ftw!)
> 
> \---
> 
> You can find me **[@adelmortescryche](https://adelmortescryche.tumblr.com/)** on Tumblr, **[@adelmorte](https://twitter.com/adelmorte)** on Twitter and **[@AdelMortescryche](https://www.pillowfort.io/AdelMortescryche)** on Pillowfort. Come hmu whenever! I'd love to chat about RPGs/anime/fandom/etc.


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